Time to lose some weight!

 I officially started my diet this weekend. I always start out slow. Just let myself get ready for when I'm truly serious about losing weight. I just made sure to stay under 1500 calories the last two days. Going back to my last year diet plan. Main meal is going to be dinner. Eat whatever, but smaller portions, no butter, not much cheese.  Breakfast is still a few 10 or under pretzel nuggets with Peanut butter. Lunch will be raw veggies or low cal air popcorn, just for some crunch. I'm also going to not weight myself but take body measurements. Doing lots of cardio exercise, skiing, etc. adding in weights to tone up. I'm all in now.. and I Feb, March, April and May plenty of time to drop at least 20 pounds. 

I'm still going to bake and try what I make. It will be just a taste. This way, I can still do what I love and still enjoy. It's not about depriving, but a compromise of what I really want. I made these breadsticks yesterday after watching the British Baking Show challenge of the day. They should be all the same length, and be the same with good flavor, evenly baked and have a snap. I failed a little with the uneven baking, and looking the same. It was harder than I thought to get them the same size and looking exactly the same. The flavor was really good, sea salt, garlic, basil and parsley. 

Bake at 400+F for 15 minutes on parchment paper

I'm going to try doing the 2nd challenge of the day, making English muffins! 

Dinner last night was bread sticks with multi color pasta and roasted cherry tomatoes with garlic over a parmesan cream sauce. Not diet food, because I didn't start 100%, but not bad since I actually cooked.

Steve and Celina joined me cross country skiing yesterday afternoon. We went to another park close to home in Hastings. Less people and no hikers! 

It was nice going on a different trail to mix up my skiing. It wasn't as far, only about 4 miles total. 

We all got pretty hot skiing. I usually don't wear a big winter coat when I ski by myself. I just wasn't sure how fast we'd be skiing and if I'd warm up as fast. 

Our Saturday..

We made little progress to show on the flooring project going on in our 4 season porch. Steve fixed the floor level issue, but that took a few hours. We decided against getting another layer of floor sheets to build up the flooring to the same height. He just added some new wood and took out some hardwood flooring that was built up too high in the entrance of the porch. This fixed our floor heigh issue. Since that took all day, no actual new floor was installed. So, I'm hoping today is the day that real progress on the floor is made. 

 

My daughter no longer needs her semi new gray sectional couch. 

I'm not crazy about the ottoman fabric. I'll try to recover it or use our old ottoman and recover that one. We will put our old leather couch down in the basement. It's nice and large for a couch and should be a good size for our porch. 

We had fresh snow last night, around 4 to 5". It's going to be a great day to go cross country skiing! Now to get Steve or the kids to join me! 

My closet is similar in size and looks to this photo. I love how they made some cube shelves at the end. I need this for my closet! 

Saturday we started playing cards early! Early, is around 2pm. I purchased UNO after we all said we needed a new game to play. We've now played Uno enough times to get my money worth of the $5 dollar purchase. We still went back to cribbage. I might need to buy another new game just for variety! 

Don't look at the pile of books on the table and all the mess behind the kids. It's just all the stuff from the 4 season porch piled up till the room is finished! 

Look at this little cutie! Oh Madelyn is getting so big. We got to see my daughter, Kendra and her family yesterday for a bit while we picked up the couch cushion to check the color with the porch/ rug etc. It was nice visiting with masks on for awhile. She isn't quite sure of who we are. Being we have on masks and she hardly see us due to the darn virus. I'm missing out on being with my grandkids. I can not wait till we have the vaccination and can all visit like normal. I'm hoping at least by spring or summer.

Just a funny Zoey picture. Her favorite thing to do when we get home. Putting her head between our legs. 

I caught her sleeping with one of her babies. 

Friday, Dinner and home projects!

 I had purchased a pineapple and Steve came up with this for dinner. Made with my fried rice, Stop top grilled Chicken, with peppers, onion and pineapple in a ginger sauce. Delicious, a success! 

My favorite TV show on Netflix right now is The Great British Baking Show. Makes me hungry for bread, cookies (biscuits), and cakes (sponges). I'm learning British lingo! As they would say "Cheers!"

Thursday we cleared out our 4 season porch. Realized the TV in the whole house didn't work unless we had our main TV hooked up and working. So we had to put it back in the room and will work around the TV. We did move out of all the furniture, books etc and now my house is full of stuff everywhere! It's the worst part of making something better, the mess! 

We ran into a little issue with the transition from the main house into our porch. The floors are not exactly the same even with more 3/4" floor boards put down on top its still off. So we went back to Menards to get more floor boards to build up the height. Unfortunately, Saturday at noon is not the time to go! Too crowded, so we opted to take a pass and go back tonight at 7pm, when the crowds will be gone. Glad we both agreed this would be best to avoid Covid crowds! 

The old carpet sure was nasty! Stained from the kids spilling coffee and a worn path where everyone walked between the couch and ottoman. Yuck! No more carpet in my house! This is the last of the carpet as we got rid of the rest upstairs years ago and put in hardwood maple floors. Steve now has second thoughts about putting this luxury vinyl over the top of our old oak hardwood and cherry flooring. He said we should have just ripped it out and started with new real wood floor. I just think that's too big of a project and too costly. We are able to do our entire main level for around $3200